The book opens on a view of her studio in July 2022. On the wall, the photographs from the book are hung above a table on which sit other prints, rolls of adhesive tape, jars filled with brushes and crayons, paints, books, a dried flower, and more. A string of loaves of round bread hung across the ceiling form a garland in the upper part of the image. The grouping points to the creative process and the companionable relationship that is forged between an artist and her work. There is something artisanal in the attention to materiality that infuses Sabiri’s production. The materiality within the images themselves is also highlighted when they are exhibited, through the supports used and the objects that may accompany the images. For example, in fall 2022, *Papa, Malika et ma guirlande de pain, Casablanca, juin 2022*, photograph number 32 in Kiss Landing – which we see pinned to the studio wall in July of that year in the first image in the book – was displayed in an exhibition2 in Toronto, with a garland of real bread extending out from the photograph. The string of loaves, symbols of conviviality, truly opened the space of the image to welcome in viewers. This hospitality is also central in Kiss Landing.

The narrative for this project developed over a long period. Sabiri drew on a large collection of photographs documenting her daily life as a sort of journal. The oldest ones were made in 2012, the year she turned eighteen. The ten years that they cover therefore correspond to the beginning of her adult life, marked by her time in art school. It was a great time of freedom, exploration, and discovery – of photography in particular, which lends itself to multiple aesthetic experiments. As we leaf through her book, we realize that her images accompany a personal quest for identity. Questions about the meaning of *at home* and, by extension, about the place one occupies in the world are woven throughout the book.
In aviation, the expression “kiss landing” means a soft, almost imperceptible touchdown. Here, it refers to the comfort and familiarity that Sabiri feels for the places where she lands, and for the hospitality of her loved ones whose portraits – the book’s main genre – populate her works. These photographs, some seemingly been taken candidly and others posed, testify to the emotional ties central to Kiss Landing and, one might easily imagine, to Sabiri’s attachment to both Montreal and Casablanca. A private dimension predominates: the images immerse us in individuals’ personal spaces (bedrooms, and even beds, are regularly featured), and we can easily envision the shared moments that form the context for the shots. Certain people appear in the photographs repeatedly, suggesting that the camera is a familiar companion, integrated into interpersonal relationships. The collaborative experience is central to Sabiri’s approach, and friendship imbues this book as much as it does her body of work.

And so, an almost imperceptible touchdown. And in fact, in the book the boundaries aren’t always clear. In many images, we can’t discern a location from the visual information that they contain. The framing is often tight, the colours soft, the light and grain almost melancholy, giving the whole a strong feeling of coherence. In addition, the photographs, most of which occupy one or two full pages, are not captioned. We must flip to the end of the book to find the who is being portrayed and the place and date of each photograph: the flap of the inside back cover unfolds to three pages, revealing miniature reproductions of all the photographs in the book. A numbering system matches each to its caption on the back of the foldout. This overview, outside the usual book format, offers a different kind of understanding: we can appreciate at a glance how the series unfolds and make connections among the images.

Photograph 72 is a particularly eloquent example of the blurring of boundaries that infuses the book. It takes up two pages and is therefore materially divided by the centre fold of the book. On the right-hand page, we see a sink under a turned-on television set in a corner the wall of which is covered with psychedelic wallpaper. On the left-hand page, a young man, seen in profile, is sitting in front of a window with an unrolled blind. Because the book’s fold coincides with the divi­sion of the space in the image, it is not obvious, at first glance, whether this is a single photograph or two that go together particularly well – if these are one or two places, on one or two continents. Referring to the captions at the back of the book, we realize that this is one image and, above all, that it’s a portrait of the person who we saw as a young boy in the preceding photograph, taken some ten years earlier. Nounou’s face is one of those that appear regularly throughout Kiss Landing. Sabiri has also had an exhibition, in Montreal,3 devoted to her ties to this younger brother who grew up far away.

Photography works like a talisman to thwart distance. Rather than travel, Kiss Landing falls under the sign of a spatial distance, underpinned by numerous departures and discoveries, that necessarily influences and intensifies the gaze. Naturally, our attention is drawn to or pulled away from the familiar, in waves that imbue banal items (a bed, a fruit basket, a meal, and so on) with a grandeur and beauty made up of the details within which intimacy rests. The proximity that forms the substance of the book responds to the geographic sepa­ration: through the private moments of individual experience, invisible but real ties are woven between two cities, so much so that we find ourselves caught in the interstices of their embrace. Kiss Landing shows how we negotiate this envelopment through the places, people, and things that we wrap around us to make a world.   Translated by Käthe Roth